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10 Christmas Advent Calendar Ideas for Preschoolers:

This round up of 10 of our favourite ideas for advent calendars that are suitable for the preschool crowd may be just what you're looking for, or may inspire you to come up with a unique idea of your own! If you have a great advent calendar for your preschooler, please share it on the Mama Pea Pod Facebook page! I love to see what you've made!

35+ Christmas Crafts for Preschoolers:

I was going to share a Ridiculously Huge Round-Up of Christmas Ideas for Preschoolers. I still am. But for the sake of getting these brilliant Christmas-themed ideas for preschoolers to you sooner, I'm breaking it up into themes. First up: Christmas Crafts for Preschoolers! Once all the themes are posted, I'll compile one Ridiculously Huge list so you can find them all in one place.

If you count them, there are exactly 35 ideas here for Christmas-themed crafty things for preschoolers to make. So why '35+'? Because I'm leaving room to come back and add more whenever I find another one that you absolutelymust see! I'm good to you that way ;-)

This simple Christmas paper chain garland is a classic craft for preschoolers - though I must tell you that I loved making it with them, too! There's something very relaxing about uncomplicated paper crafts.There's just three easy steps and all you need is:

Christmas-patterned paper (even better if it's got patterns or colour on both sides - I recommend double-sided Christmas scrapbook paper [affiliate link], but you could use gift wrap or even magazine pages)

Glue (I find that glue sticks or glue pens [affiliate links] are much easier for preschoolers to manage for this craft than liquid glue.)

1. Cut the paper into strips (depending on your preschooler's age and cutting skills, you may want to do the cutting part yourself. I cut them for my 2 1/2 year old, while my 5 year old cut her own strips.)2. Bend each strip into a circle and link it through the one before.3. Glue the ends together to hold the circle.Sometimes preschoolers forget to link it through before glueing, but no biggie, it's easy to link the two parts together with a new strip.The finished paper chains look so sweet and festive around the Christmas tree or draped over doorways or shelves.Simple and classic, but I love this craft!

StarsBook and Activities:

Book by Mary Lyn Ray and Marla Frazee

We borrowed this book from our school library and had such a hard time returning it that, ahem, we may have hogged it for most of the school year! Full of hope and wisdom, this sweet, inspiring book helps children to embrace their creativity by noticing the stars all around us (not only the ones in the sky), and to use them to gain strength when they need it.

Stars activities

Sweet Pea's favourite song is Twinkle, Twinkle, which we must sing every night before bed. She decided that it would help her sleep better if she had her very own Twinkle Twinkle Star in her room to watch over her and keep the bad dreams away (she also has a dream catcher and Gruffalo toy [affiliate link] for this purpose, but they must not work all that well since she often visits us in the night!)
So we made her very own Twinkle Twinkle Star!

You need:

Some stiff cardboard

Some aluminum foil

Some Sharpie markers

Shiny ribbon

A sharp pencil

Optional: printable star template

I just drew a star freehand (it took a few tries to get the shape I wanted, but no matter). Then I cut it out for her and poked a hole in one of the points with the sharp pencil.

I gave Sweet Pea some squares of tin foil and she wrapped her star. Then she used the permanent markers to draw on the foil. She wanted a face on hers, smiling down at her in the night, but you could decorate it any way you like. (You could also add some stick-on 'jewels' for extra bling, like in these tin foil trees from Happy Hooligans.)

Then I used the pencil to repoke the hole through the foil (not sure that it was really necessary to do it twice, it might have sufficed to just do it after it was wrapped), and then strung some shiny ribbon through it to hang up.

She's so proud of it!

It would also make a lovely Christmas decoration for the tree, or make it a 6-pointed star and you have a Hanukah craft for little ones.

Stars to Eat:

Stars to 'Do':

Stars to Read:

Starfish (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science) [affiliate link] - another one we borrowed from the library, and we learned so much about the stars in our seas and oceans - and it has a fun starfish craft in the back that we made but I never got around to blogging about. Maybe one day...

How to Catch a Star [affiliate link] by the ever-popular Oliver Jeffers. We haven't read this one yet, but it's on our wish list.

As parents, we tend to spend all our time worrying about all the possible terrible things that could happen to our kids. We don't think about ourselves. But taking care of ourselves is just as important - precisely because it is so important for them to have us around.

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